The extent to which Tinto's model of college withdrawal has predictive validity in different types of postsecondary institutions was tested during the 1978-79 and 1979-80 academic years. Secondary analyses were conducted on a sample of 2,326 freshman students from 11 diverse institutions participating in project CHOICE (to better inform prospective students). The schools were residential universities, private liberal arts colleges, two-year commuter colleges, and four-year commuter institutions. The various measures of Tinto's concepts of social and academic involvement did explain modest but significant increments in the variance in freshman year voluntary persistence/withdrawal decisions, even when an extensive range of student background characteristics were considered. A number of measures of institutional involvement such as residence arrangement and participation in career counseling programs had direct positive effects on persistence and are amenable to administrative policies and planning. The relationships among the constructs of social/academic involvement, institutional commitment, and commitment to the goal of graduation and persistence were marked by more consistency with theoretical expectations in the residential and liberal art samples than in the two- or four-year commuter samples. The concept of social involvement had little salience for commuter students. Additional findings suggest that institutional persistence/withdrawal decisions during the freshman year are the result of a complex interaction of different influences. Appended materials include a bibliography, statistical tables of the findings, and a student involvement questionnaire. (Author/SW)